CLEVELAND — “FirstEnergy’s efforts to re-make itself into a delivery-only electric utility — and maybe shed its power plant subsidiary FirstEnergy Solutions — has many people worried that power plants will shut down and Ohio will run short of electricity.

The entire future is uncertain, but what’s known right now is that subsidiary FES is loaded down with billions of dollars of debt and has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring and protection from thousands of creditors.

Whether FES succeeds without creditors managing to drag the corporate parent into the case is still unknown. And whether FES continues to exist after the bankruptcy case, filed last weekend, is over is also an unknown. But keep in mind that the FES bankruptcy is not a Chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcy.

FES was incorporated as the FirstEnergy Service Co. in 1997 under another name and did not become FirstEnergy Solutions until 2001, according to state records, just about the time Ohio’s deregulation law kicked in, giving customers the choice to shop competing retail suppliers.”

Clean Energy votes

Members supporting clean energy in Ohio as of October 27, 2018

50,405 Ohioans have signed our support statement in person at their door.

2,050 members have sent postcards to Ohio legislators, urging them to fix the wind setback rule in Ohio

15,919 Ohio Citizen Action members have sent handwritten letters to their state legislators in support of clean energy.

7,830 Ohio Citizen Action members have called their state legislators, asking them to oppose HB239 a nd SB 155, the latest coal bailout requests by Duke Energy, FirstEnergy, Dayton Power & Light and American Electric Power.